


A Mother Loves Her Kids As They Love Her

by TheOnlyHuman



Series: AU: Deep Claws [8]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bat Clan, Bat Family, Bat Family Feels, Bat family love, Family Fluff, Female Dick Grayson, Female Talon Dick Grayson, Hospitalisation, Injury, Mama Dick Grayson, Mother's Day, Mother's Day Cards, Shh, Swearing, bat down, i knOW IM LATE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 09:17:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18363062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOnlyHuman/pseuds/TheOnlyHuman
Summary: Rachel Wayne is in hospital following a terrible injury. The family decide to give her a bit of a mood lifter.For Mother's day.





	A Mother Loves Her Kids As They Love Her

 

Stephanie slid open the door, peeping her head through first. Quietly, at the sound of a calm heart monitor, she tip-toed into the private room, motioning Cass in after her.

One look at the woman in the bed had her gut twisting. They'd decided in the end, with Rachel nearly comatose after the _incident_ with Bane the Bastard, it was easier to go public (barely) and have her put in hospital, at least to avoid uncomfortable questions later on. Questions as to how she'd broken her back.

Currently, all the public knew was that she'd taken a fall down the stairs and was in bad shape.

Stephanie hated hospitals. She hated how they made her feel weak, hated how, when she seen the death and destruction her mother had lived with for decades, it made her feel stupid, like what they did _out there_ meant nothing. It felt as if people only went to the hospital if they were dying and believed they weren't going to make it back out.

The IV line and steady heart monitor hooked up to Rachel, who was fitfully asleep as was normal of recent, only attributed to the feeling that her older sister was dying.

The sheet amount of white -the blankets, the pillows, the furniture, the clothes— it all made her look too pale. Made her look sicker than she was. Made her seem so terribly ill.

"She's living," Cass put her callused, firm hand on her shoulder. Stephanie let out a breath, feeling uneasy in how she'd stopped about five feet away from the hospital bed. It was like Cass was psychic sometimes, with how she just seemed to _know things_ from reading people's body language.

"I know," she tried for a chuckle but it fell short, dissolving into a tired sigh. Her cheeks burned and the bag in her hand felt like a thousand tons pulling down on her, crushing her, there was no oxygen, only light, then voices—

Cass shuffled forward, sitting down on the plush chair by Rachel's side that Jason had barely been out of all week. Tim and Duke had dragged him down to the café down on First Ave. to, as Tim had said, 'de-stress before we stress too much'. The black haired Asain took Rachel's limp hand in her own, cradling it as if it were more precious than even diamonds.

If Stephanie was telling the truth, she _was._ Rachel was more important than a lot of things she'd -or the family as a whole- had had in her life. Simply because she was _Rachel._

Said woman stirred, eyes fluttering as she squeezed Cass's hand and offered them both a weak smile in hello. Steph returned it as Cass squeezed back, but she stayed standing by the foot of the older woman's bed.

She was forty-two. Rachel didn't deserve this. At this rate, she was going to end up celebrating her forty-forth birthday (because she left the years of the Talon's reign out of her official age count) in the hospital, covering for her public persona. 

Just like how Bruce hadn't been able to celebrate his—

_Damn it, don't cry._

Life _wasn't_ fair.

Stephanie quelled the brittle, broken _sad_ laugh that statement brought. Like she _hadn't_ known _that_ already.

"C'mere, Steph," Rachel slurred, voice low and rough. It was almost akin to Nightwing's, except for the fact it was tempered and soft, like its owner expected it to falter at any moment. Her unoccupied hand rose off the bed, softly motioning her over even with its cruel tremors.

Steph's feet followed the command-wish-order before her mind could protest. It just _hurt_... It _hurt_ so much to see her sister, the family's practical fucking _mother_ , _hurt, injured_ , lying in a hospital bed, eyes half lidded because of exhaustion and pain.

(Pain they could've stopped from even being caused.)

It had been a rough couple of weeks. Somehow, it seemed even harder now that she was in hospital. Now that she was actually awake and could barely stand on her own without help.

"Hey," Stephanie cooed, floating uncertainly by the bedside. Cass was gazing calmly at her and it urged her to pull up the bag from her side, shaking it in Rachel's peripheral. "We got you some things."

"Really?" Rachel's eyes lit up, her hand stilling in its journey of reaching out to grasp her hand. Stephanie set the bag gently beside her and pulled out the Demon Spawn's handmade card first, holding Rachel's hand for a brief second in greeting.

Her hands were so cold. Steph was also _pretty sure_ it wasn't the cold that was making them shake like a mountain experiencing a landslide.

_Nerve damage,_ a traitorous voice whispered. Steph recognised it as the one that urged her to patrol the streets in the early hours of the morning, the one that lusted for a fight, waited for that punch, yearned for a good clean win. It was the one that made her wait to feel the slap of her cape against her heels, made her want to hear the all-too-familiar  _swish_ of a cape long gone.

It was her vigilante side, the so-called illegal side of her that if Gordon really did resign, would be all-too illegal under the next unsympathetic Commissioner, _Jason_ fucking _Bard._

It was the real side of her; Spoiler.

"The brat made you this. Insisted I gave it to you first." The kid's card was beautiful, with nice colours and a large, loving _Mother's Day_ scrawled neater than Stephanie could ever hope to write in elegant looping cursive. It looked like it had taken hours to make, and Steph knew it had. That much was obvious, even without looking at the inside.

Rachel held it like she was afraid of breaking it yet afraid of dropping it all the same. Pulling it closer to her chest as Cass handed her her reading glasses she slid them on and blinked. Not a second later her eyes watered at the sight of the perfectly drawn family picture. Rachel was forced to pull her hand out of Cass's to cover her mouth.

"It's-" she broke off, cutting down a sob. Tears ran free and never in a thousand years had Stephanie though a simple _'I love you, Rachel. Sincerely, Damian.'_ and a damn good drawing could get her to cry. "I can't even-"

Stephanie soothed her nerves by sitting on the side of the bed, well clear of Rachel's legs but close enough so that should need be she could kick her off. (Although, she didn't think Rachel could even think about moving her legs right now without breaking down.)

"If you're crying over that one just wait and see what Duke wrote." She passed said boy's card over -it was practically _dripping_ in glitter and she knew the insides weren't much better, aside from the nine full-on paragraphs of pure _love._

Her _sister-mother-friend_ burst into louder tears one paragraph in.

Jason came back to a watery eyed Rachel with a plethora of Mother's Day cards carefully set all over her bed, each one handmade and signed, a stack of chocolates on the bedside table and an adorable cuddly tiger clutched in her arms.

"I see you got them," he smiled.

"Yes," Rachel said, voice weak from crying. "Thank you."

Jason smiled, "Damian's coming over after school, you can thank him then. He was the one that suggested it, after all."

The smile that graced Rachel's face would be forever burned in Stephanie's memory. She felt like crying happy tears of joy, (because Rachel was going to get better, she was going to heal,) even as she said, "I'd like to think I had a part in it too. Considering I was the only one to actually _remember_ the date."

"Come here, all of you," Rachel said, arms outstretched for a hug.

Rachel was a really good hugger.


End file.
